THE STATE OF MOBILE NETWORK EXPERIENCE Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the revolution

MAY 2019

Author Peter Boyland Senior Analyst

Opensignal active userbase:

Total Devices Total Measurements Data Collection Period 43,614,234 139,960,248,468 Jan 1st – Mar 31st, 2019

Opensignal is the independent global standard for analyzing consumer mobile experience. Our industry reports are the definitive guide to understanding the true experience consumers receive on networks.

Key Findings

Download Speed Experience scores range from Over 5 Mbps separated the top 10 in Upload over 50 Mbps to under 2 Mbps Speed Experience was the only country to score over The biggest variation between Upload Speed 50 Mbps in Download Speed Experience, with Experience scores of our users was at the top end the majority of countries scoring in the 10-20 of the table, where the gap between leader Mbps range across our users. We saw a huge Denmark and tenth-placed Canada was over 5 range of scores in this metric, with the lowest Mbps. average score being less than 2 Mbps. Strong showings for the U.S. and India in 4G No country manages to break the 30ms Latency Availability Experience milestone Only four European countries made our 4G In only 13 of the 87 countries we rated our users Availability top 10 — the fewest of any of our averaged Latency Experience scores under 40 award metrics. And both the U.S. and India made milliseconds, while none scored under 30ms. One the top 10, despite being distinctly mid-table in all continent dominated our Latency Experience our other key metrics. analysis, with six European countries in our top 10. 5G’s designers target much improved latency as Europe dominates Opensignal's key metrics one of their goals. A look at the leading countries across Opensignal's metrics shows the preeminence of Europe. In a Europe best for Video Experience — but no ranking of the 10 countries who scored highly market has an Excellent rating across all five of our key metrics, only two were Of the top 25 countries who achieved Very Good from outside Europe. ratings in Video Experience, only six were from outside Europe. Our users in Norway and Hungary both scored just over 74 points (out of 100) — meaning no country has yet achieved an Excellent

Video Experience rating.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Introduction

The world is poised on the brink of the 5G revolution. We're already seeing early commercial launches in leading mobile regions. While the majority of operators in mature markets are planning to upgrade in the next couple of years, 5G is likely to take several years to reach the average consumer, due to spectrum availability and the sheer time and costs involved in rolling out the next generation of mobile networks.

In this report, we’ve taken a deep dive into the global mobile network experience of today’s consumers. We looked at data from January through March, the timeframe just prior to the first 5G services launching in South Korea and the U.S. We examined 87 countries and compared their performance across all five of our key award metrics: 4G Availability, Video Experience, Download and Upload Speed Experience, and Latency Experience.

We've found that 4G is becoming more and more ubiquitous, even in developing markets. Our analysis shows that the average 4G Availability across the 87 countries experienced by our users is close to 80%, with 15 markets scoring over the 90% mark. The top ends of our tables were largely dominated by European countries, but no one country appeared in the top 10 for all five of our key metrics. European countries, however, dominated, racking up far more top 10 entries than any other region.

Opensignal’s latest State of Mobile Network Experience report provides the benchmark to assess to what extent the real-world 5G experience will be superior to the existing mobile network experience enjoyed by billions of consumers worldwide.

It's very early days for 5G, but we're already seeing some notable commercial network launches. 5G won't just deliver faster speeds. The new technology will provide a blanket of capacity, built using new high- bandwidth, high-frequency spectrum bands that will help mitigate the congestion which we see impacting the mobile network experience across many of our metrics. And the upgrades won't just be felt in speed — 5G will offer great improvements to latency, opening up a whole new world of mobile use cases. But it will take 5G a long time to become as ubiquitous as 4G. This report offers a snapshot of the 4G mobile network experience as we step into the 5G era.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

South Korea passes 50 Mbps in Download Speed Experience — but the global average is less than 20 Mbps

On the eve of 5G’s launch, South Korea was the only country where users enjoyed average mobile Download Speeds over 50 Mbps, although Norway was close behind with 48.2 Mbps. Then there was a bit of a drop in speeds to the next two countries, Canada and the Netherlands, where we measured Download Speed Experience at just over 42 Mbps. The remaining six of the top 10 markets scored in the 33- 40 Mbps range. The global average score of the 87 countries we analyzed was 17.6 Mbps — barely a third of the top score.

Canada's impressive third place is little surprise, since our most recent report on Canada found our users on all three operators experienced over 35 Mbps in Download Speed Experience, while speeds of over 60 Mbps weren't uncommon in the country's biggest cities.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Download Speed Experience Download Speed Experience

South Korea 52.4 Norway 48.2 Canada 42.5 Netherlands 42.4 Singapore 39.3 Australia 37.4 Switzerland 35.2 Denmark 34.6 Belgium 34.2 Japan 33.0 Hungary 32.7 Czech Republic 31.5 Sweden 30.8 Austria 27.5 New Zealand 27.3 Finland 27.0 Croatia 26.7 Taiwan 26.6 France 25.2 Spain 24.8 Qatar 24.6 23.8 Slovakia 23.3 Germany 22.6 Bulgaria 22.5 United Kingdom 21.7 Portugal 21.6 Serbia 21.5 Albania 21.4 USA 21.3 Romania 20.6 Oman 20.3 United Arab Emirates 19.9 Italy 19.9 Poland 17.3 Turkey 17.1 Lebanon 16.9 Hong Kong 16.7 Ireland 16.2 Kuwait 16.2 Myanmar 16.0 South Africa 15.0 Mexico 14.9 Vietnam 14.1 Bahrain 13.9 Israel 13.6 Saudi Arabia 13.6 Tunisia 13.4 Azerbaijan 13.4 Brazil 13.0 Argentina 12.8 Bolivia 12.5 Chile 12.0 Russian Federation 12.0 Peru 11.7 Malaysia 11.5 Kazakhstan 11.4 Ukraine 11.2 Morocco 11.2 Guatemala 10.8 Sri Lanka 10.7 Paraguay 10.6 Ecuador 10.5 Jordan 10.4 Costa Rica 10.1 Kenya 10.1 Colombia 10.0 Egypt 8.6 Dominican Republic 8.5 Belarus 7.7 Panama 7.2 Philippines 7.0 Indonesia 6.9 India 6.8 Ivory Coast 6.7 Pakistan 6.2 Thailand 5.7 Bangladesh 5.7 Cambodia 5.6 Nigeria 5.4 El Salvador 5.4 Senegal 5.1 Ghana 5.1 Uzbekistan 5.0 Nepal 4.4 Algeria 3.1 Iraq 1.6 0 10 20 30 40 50 Mbps

We saw the widest variety of scores of all our award metrics in Download Speed Experience, with average speeds ranging from over 50 Mbps to less than 2 Mbps. There were 13 countries with Download Speed Experience scores over 30 Mbps, while 35 of the 87 markets we measured fell into the 10-20 Mbps range, and 20 scored under 10 Mbps.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Number of countries by Download Speed Experience range

Top Upload Speed Experience scores showed a range of over 5 Mbps

A lot of the hype around 5G has been based on the huge increases in mobile network speeds it could deliver. But we are still seeing a huge range of experiences across our speed metrics. In Upload Speed Experience, top countries Denmark and South Korea both scored over 15 Mbps, while Iraq scored an average speed under 1 Mbps.

Interestingly, the widest variation between Upload Speed Experience scores was at the top end of the table. The gap between number 1 (Denmark) and number 10 (Canada) was over 5 Mbps, while below that there were 40 countries within 5 Mbps of Canada's score.

If we compare this variable with our Download Speed Experience scores though, we saw a much steeper drop-off in our download measurements with speeds more than halving among the top 20 countries. While this is partly due to a couple of outliers at the top of our Download Speed Experience table, it also illustrates the wide range of speeds experienced, even in the world's fastest markets.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Top 20 country scores by Download Speed ExperienceTop 20 cvs.oun tUploadry scores by D Speedownload Sp eExperienceed Experience vs. Upload Speed Experience 60

50

40

s p

b 30 M

20

10

0 0 5 10 15 20 Top 20 countries ranked by Download & Upload Speed Experience

Data collection period: Jan. 1, 2019 - Mar. 30, 2019 (Source: Opensignal)

Upload speeds are typically slower than download, as current mobile technologies tend to be focused on providing the best possible download speeds. But upload speed is becoming increasingly important as consumer mobile habits shift away from downloading and consuming to uploading and creating and sharing content like smartphone-created photos and videos.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

A strong showing from Europe across Latency Experience

5G will not just offer great improvements in speed. The next generation of is likely to bring great improvements in latency, opening up a whole new world of mobile use cases. But what's the current benchmark for 5G to beat? Our analysis of the global Latency Experience shows just 13 countries scored under 40 milliseconds, while none have yet managed to pass the 30ms bar (although Singapore came tantalizingly close on 30.7ms).

A couple of high-flying markets — Norway and the Netherlands — were notably absent from our Latency Experience top 10 (although the Netherlands only narrowly missed out, coming in 12th). But a look at our global heatmap shows that Europe still leads for responsive mobile experiences which are important for online gaming and real-time communications.

Latency Experience (miliseconds)

An examination of the leading countries across our key metrics — those that ranked among the top 10 in at least one of our award metrics — shows that Europe was notably well represented. This list should not be seen as

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

indicative of a superior overall mobile network experience, since there are many other factors to consider beyond our key metrics. And a couple of markets, India and the U.S., appear in just one top 10 but are some way behind in our other metrics. But the prevalence of European markets among the leading countries is clear.

Comparison of leading countries in Opensignal key metrics

Rankings in each metric (out of 87 countries)

Download Upload 4G Video Speed Speed Latency Availability Experience Experience Experience Experience Australia 13 15 6 22 10 Austria 23 4 14 17 11 Belgium 12 8 9 7 7 Canada 18 17 3 10 29 Czech Republic 11 3 12 5 3 Denmark 19 5 8 1 6 Hong Kong 4 27 38 31 5 Hungary 8 2 11 8 2 India 10 74 74 78 63 Japan 2 18 10 16 33 Netherlands 6 6 4 6 12 Norway 3 1 2 3 23 Serbia 27 23 28 28 7 Singapore 14 9 5 5 1 South Korea 1 24 1 2 21 Sweden 9 7 13 13 18 Switzerland 16 10 7 9 4 Taiwan 7 14 18 14 9 USA 5 58 30 39 50 Data collection period: Jan. 1, 2019 - Mar. 30, 2019 (Source: Opensignal)

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

High rankings for the U.S. and India in 4G Availability

This report provides the definitive way to compare mobile network experience between countries, to set a benchmark against which we can compare any new 5G launch. And one of the core metrics to define the mobile user experience is 4G Availability. Comparing this metric across 87 countries, we saw only four European countries in our top 10 — the fewest of any of our award categories. In all of our other mobile network experience measures, we saw at least half of the top 10 ranked countries from Europe.

However, neither Switzerland nor Singapore featured in the top-ranked countries for 4G Availability, despite both appearing in the top 10s for all our other mobile network experience metrics. And users in Japan scored second place for 4G Availability, despite barely appearing in the top countries for our other four categories. At the other end of the table, we only saw five countries with 4G Availability scores under 60%, while Uzbekistan was the only market to see users spending less than 50% of the time on 4G.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

4G Availability 4G Availability

South Korea 97.5 Japan 96.3 Norway 95.5 Hong Kong 94.1 USA 93.0 Netherlands 92.8 Taiwan 92.8 Hungary 91.4 Sweden 91.1 India 90.9 Czech Republic 90.6 Belgium 90.4 Australia 90.3 Singapore 90.2 Kuwait 90.0 Switzerland 89.6 Finland 89.5 Canada 88.8 Denmark 88.6 Thailand 88.0 Spain 87.4 United Arab Emirates 87.3 Austria 86.6 Qatar 86.2 United Kingdom 84.7 Slovakia 84.5 Serbia 83.8 Indonesia 83.5 Croatia 83.4 Peru 83.3 Myanmar 83.2 Greece 83.2 Poland 82.9 Oman 82.6 Portugal 82.6 Panama 81.5 Bahrain 81.2 Cambodia 81.1 Kazakhstan 81.0 Mexico 79.8 France 79.7 Malaysia 79.6 Bulgaria 79.5 Paraguay 79.1 Argentina 79.0 Italy 79.0 Turkey 79.0 Saudi Arabia 78.9 Romania 78.8 Bolivia 78.7 Lebanon 78.6 Vietnam 78.4 Senegal 77.2 Germany 76.9 Morocco 76.8 Chile 76.7 New Zealand 76.5 South Africa 75.9 Pakistan 74.9 Kenya 74.2 Russian Federation 73.9 Dominican Republic 73.6 Jordan 73.3 Colombia 73.3 Guatemala 73.1 Azerbaijan 72.9 Philippines 72.4 Albania 72.2 Brazil 72.0 Tunisia 71.8 Ivory Coast 71.8 Israel 69.5 Sri Lanka 68.9 Belarus 68.6 Ukraine 66.4 Bangladesh 65.8 Costa Rica 65.8 Egypt 65.4 Ireland 63.7 Nigeria 63.0 El Salvador 62.8 Ghana 61.2 Iraq 59.7 Nepal 57.6 Ecuador 57.1 Algeria 56.5 Uzbekistan 49.9 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 % time

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

One of the standout countries to feature in the top five of our 4G Availability rankings was the U.S. The country is distinctly mid-table across all of our other key award metrics but managed a fifth-place finish in 4G Availability. In our most recent Mobile Network Experience USA report, we saw overtake T-Mobile following a fierce battle in this metric. This rivalry has driven up 4G Availability in the country, leading to a world-class position for the U.S. in our rankings.

The other notable country at the top of our 4G Availability ranking was India, which also achieved a spot among the top 10 countries. The story of India's remarkable rise to the top of our 4G Availability table began with the debut of in 2016, which seriously disrupted the market with its aggressive low-cost unlimited data bundles. The operator rolled out its 4G network at a remarkable rate, hitting 97.5% 4G Availability in our last report on India — the highest score among operators we have ever measured in any of our country reports. Jio's success has in turn fuelled huge rises in LTE reach among its rivals, propelling India into our top 10 for 4G Availability — a remarkable achievement for a relatively new LTE market with such a vast geographical size and population.

Video Experience dominated by Northern and Central European markets

Offering a combination of big capacity and low latency, 5G has the potential to revolutionize the mobile Video Experience. But what's the benchmark to beat in our current global markets? The top end of our Video Experience table was dominated by European countries. Norway led in mobile Video Experience followed by Hungary — with only six non- European countries among the top 25 who all scored a Very Good rating (65-75 out of 100). 5G should mean more consumers will be able to enjoy a good mobile Video Experience more often because of the increased mobile capacity new high frequency 5G spectrum will provide to mobile operators.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Video Experience countries with a Very Good rating Video Experience countries with a Very Good rating Norway 74.7 Hungary 74.2 Czech Republic 73.3 Austria 73.3 Denmark 72.5 Netherlands 72.2 Sweden 70.8 Belgium 70.5 Singapore 70.3 Switzerland 70.0 Croatia 69.5 Slovakia 69.4 Finland 69.4 Taiwan 69.4 Australia 68.5 Spain 68.2 Canada 67.7 Japan 67.3 Portugal 66.7 Bulgaria 66.6 Germany 66.3 United Kingdom 66.2 Serbia 65.7 South Korea 65.6 Greece 65.2 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 Video Experience score (0-100)

Norway and Hungary both scored just over 74 points — meaning users in no country have yet enjoyed an Excellent Video Experience rating (over 75). But we saw 10 countries with scores over 70 in our measurements, meaning we expect most of these to achieve an Excellent rating in the next year.

Europe's dominance of Video Experience extended well beyond the top of the table. Of the 25 countries that achieved Very Good (65-75) ratings, only six were from outside Europe: Singapore, Taiwan, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea. Lower down the table, we saw users in 26 countries enjoy a Good (55-65) Video Experience rating, while the same number scored Fair (40-55) ratings. The remaining 10 markets fell into the Poor (0-40) category. For a deep dive into our Video Experience metric, please see our State of Mobile Video report.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Number of countries by Video Experience rating Number of countries by Video Experience rating 35

30 26 26 25

25

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t 20

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f 15

o

r e b 10

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0 Poor (0-40) Fair (40-55) Good (55-65) Very Good (65-75) Data collection period: Jan. 1, 2019 - Mar. 30, 2019 (Source: Opensignal)

The 5G revolution begins

It's very early days for 5G, but we've seen a number of commercial launches over the past couple of months, with the U.S. and Asia leading the charge. A lot of markets are still in the process of reallocating spectrum bands for 5G use. But once the first networks are up and running and 5G devices become more widely available, we expect to see the new technology take off in a big way provided the real-world 5G experience is significantly better than the existing mobile experience.

We've seen 4G technology transform the way we use mobile devices beyond the basic voice and messaging services of the early 2000s. Faster and more ubiquitous data connectivity has spread to almost every corner of the globe, and everyday mobile experience has now grown into entirely new sectors such as online gaming, streamed video and instant financial services. And with a plethora of new services and use cases being made real by the hyper-fast speeds and low latency promised by 5G, the mobile network experience is set to metamorphize once again in the next decade.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Download Upload Latency 4G Video Speed Speed Experience Availability Experience Experience Experience (ms) (%) (out of 100) (Mbps) (Mbps) Albania 21.4 6.2 74.1 72.2 57.6 Algeria 3.1 1.8 109.9 56.5 30.5 Argentina 12.8 4.8 58.9 79.0 58.5 Australia 37.4 8.2 37.6 90.3 68.5 Austria 27.5 8.8 38.6 86.6 73.3 Azerbaijan 13.4 3.4 61.9 72.9 53.5 Bahrain 13.9 4.8 40.1 81.2 55.4 Bangladesh 5.7 1.7 80.4 65.8 40.5 Belarus 7.7 4.3 56.5 68.6 51.2 Belgium 34.2 11.9 35.3 90.4 70.5 Bolivia 12.5 6.0 60.6 78.7 58.9 Brazil 13.0 4.5 71.5 72.0 52.1 Bulgaria 22.5 8.2 40.7 79.5 66.6 Cambodia 5.6 2.3 79.0 81.1 38.6 Canada 42.5 10.2 46.4 88.8 67.7 Chile 12.0 5.8 52.2 76.7 49.3 Colombia 10.0 3.6 75.6 73.3 48.8 Costa Rica 10.1 4.1 63.8 65.8 48.3 Croatia 26.7 10.0 50.4 83.4 69.5 Czech 31.5 12.5 33.7 90.6 73.3 Republic Denmark 34.6 15.3 34.8 88.6 72.5 Dominican 8.5 3.2 62.7 73.6 46.8 Republic Ecuador 10.5 3.7 97.3 57.1 46.8 Egypt 8.6 2.8 53.2 65.4 51.2 El Salvador 5.4 2.4 73.2 62.8 43.8 Finland 27.0 10.0 41.6 89.5 69.4 France 25.2 6.1 51.6 79.7 62.5 Germany 22.6 7.6 44.4 76.9 66.3 Ghana 5.1 1.8 157.1 61.2 34.7 Greece 23.8 6.9 42.0 83.2 65.2 Guatemala 10.8 5.7 62.8 73.1 51.0 Hong Kong 16.7 7.1 34.5 94.1 64.6 Hungary 32.7 11.4 33.4 91.4 74.2 India 6.8 2.1 67.9 90.9 42.7 Indonesia 6.9 3.1 64.6 83.5 46.7 Iraq 1.6 0.7 139.4 59.7 18.8 Ireland 16.2 5.8 48.9 63.7 61.7 Israel 13.6 7.9 49.8 69.5 52.9 Italy 19.9 7.3 55.1 79.0 64.1 Ivory Coast 6.7 2.1 156.5 71.8 38.9

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Download Upload Latency 4G Video Speed Speed Experience Availability Experience Experience Experience (ms) (%) (out of 100) (Mbps) (Mbps) Japan 33.0 9.1 47.2 96.3 67.3 Jordan 10.4 5.3 51.3 73.3 55.7 Kazakhstan 11.4 4.9 99.8 81.0 52.4 Kenya 10.1 3.8 72.1 74.2 44.1 Kuwait 16.2 8.5 44.2 90.0 62.9 Lebanon 16.9 5.4 79.3 78.6 56.0 Malaysia 11.5 4.6 51.4 79.6 51.9 Mexico 14.9 7.0 66.9 79.8 58.3 Morocco 11.2 4.0 66.5 76.8 50.4 Myanmar 16.0 6.6 78.7 83.2 62.6 Nepal 4.4 1.1 80.1 57.6 37.7 Netherlands 42.4 12.2 38.8 92.8 72.2 New Zealand 27.3 7.6 55.5 76.5 64.5 Nigeria 5.4 1.5 112.5 63.0 37.9 Norway 48.2 14.5 42.3 95.5 74.7 Oman 20.3 6.5 47.9 82.6 62.1 Pakistan 6.2 2.4 114.0 74.9 41.8 Panama 7.2 4.7 77.5 81.5 45.6 Paraguay 10.6 4.4 67.5 79.1 57.6 Peru 11.7 5.9 62.1 83.3 45.5 Philippines 7.0 2.2 71.0 72.4 35.1 Poland 17.3 6.3 47.1 82.9 63.0 Portugal 21.6 8.0 42.2 82.6 66.7 Qatar 24.6 8.5 38.9 86.2 64.8 Romania 20.6 7.8 41.3 78.8 62.3 Russian 12.0 4.8 73.6 73.9 58.8 Federation Saudi Arabia 13.6 6.6 73.5 78.9 55.6 Senegal 5.1 1.5 115.3 77.2 30.9 Serbia 21.5 7.4 37.1 83.8 65.7 Singapore 39.3 12.9 30.7 90.2 70.3 Slovakia 23.3 8.5 40.7 84.5 69.4 South Africa 15.0 4.6 44.7 75.9 58.7 South Korea 52.4 15.1 42.2 97.5 65.6 Spain 24.8 9.2 46.6 87.4 68.2 Sri Lanka 10.7 3.6 63.9 68.9 48.6 Sweden 30.8 9.7 41.4 91.1 70.8 Switzerland 35.2 11.2 34.0 89.6 70.0 Taiwan 26.6 9.3 37.3 92.8 69.4 Thailand 5.7 3.4 47.1 88.0 42.6 Tunisia 13.4 4.3 48.0 71.8 56.0

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Download Upload Latency 4G Video Speed Speed Experience Availability Experience Experience Experience (ms) (%) (out of 100) (Mbps) (Mbps) Turkey 17.1 6.1 51.0 79.0 60.4 Ukraine 11.2 5.1 60.6 66.4 54.5 United Arab 19.9 6.4 44.1 87.3 60.5 Emirates United 21.7 7.4 46.0 84.7 66.2 Kingdom United 21.3 6.3 60.0 93.0 51.3 States of America Uzbekistan 5.0 1.5 120.5 49.9 37.1 Vietnam 14.1 5.5 59.5 78.4 55.2

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Our Methodology Opensignal measures the real-world experience of consumers on mobile networks as they go about their daily lives.

We collect over 3 billion individual measurements every day from tens of millions of worldwide. Our measurements are collected at all hours of the day, every day of the year, under conditions of normal usage, including inside buildings and outdoors, in cities and the countryside, and everywhere in between. By analyzing on-device measurements recorded in the places where subscribers actually live, work and travel, we report on mobile network service the way users truly experience it. We continually adapt our methodology to best represent the changing experience of consumers on mobile networks and, therefore, comparisons of the results to past reports should be considered indicative only.

Confidence Intervals

For every metric we calculate statistical confidence intervals indicated on our graphs. When confidence intervals overlap, our measured results are too close to declare a winner. In those cases, we show a statistical draw. For this reason, some metrics have multiple operator winners.

In our bar graphs we represent confidence intervals as boundaries on either sides of graph bars. In our supporting-metric charts we show confidence intervals as +/- numerical values.

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The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution

Our Metrics

4G Availability Download Speed. This metric shows the average download speed for each operator on 3G 4G Availability shows the proportion of time connections as measured by Opensignal users. Opensignal users with a 4G device have a 4G connection. 4G Availability is not a measure of Upload Speed coverage or the geographic extent of a network. Experience

Video Upload Speed Experience measures the average Experience upload speeds experienced by Opensignal users across an operator’s 3G and 4G networks. Video Experience quantifies the quality of mobile It factors in 3G and 4G upload speeds along with video experienced by Opensignal users on real- the availability of each technology. world video streams. 4G Upload Speed. This metric shows the average To calculate Video Experience, we directly upload speed for each operator on LTE measure video streams from end-user devices, connections as measured by Opensignal users. using an ITU-based approach to quantify factors such as load times, stalling and video resolution 3G Upload Speed. This metric shows the average over both an operator's 3G and 4G networks. upload speed for each operator on 3G Video Experience for each operator is calculated connections as measured by Opensignal users. on a scale from 0 to 100. 4G Video Experience. This metric quantifies the Latency quality of mobile video for each operator on LTE Experience connections as experienced by Opensignal users on real-world video streams. Measured in milliseconds, latency refers to the delay users experience as data makes a round trip 3G Video Experience. This metric quantifies the through the network. quality of mobile video for each operator on 3G connections as experienced by Opensignal users Our Latency Experience metric is calculated as an on real-world video streams. average of the individual 3G and 4G latency measurements based on the proportion of time Opensignal users spend connected to each Download Speed network type. A lower score in this metric is a sign Experience of a more responsive network.

Download Speed Experience shows the average 4G Latency. This metric shows the average download speed experienced by Opensignal latency for each operator on LTE connections as users across an operator’s 3G and 4G networks. measured by Opensignal users.

It factors in 3G and 4G download speeds along 3G Latency. This metric shows the average with the availability of each technology. latency for each operator on 3G connections as measured by Opensignal users. 4G Download Speed. This metric shows the average download speed for each operator on LTE connections as measured by Opensignal users. 19

The State of Mobile Network Experience Our Metrics Benchmarking mobile on the eve of the 5G revolution